David Levy is a professor of oncology at Georgetown University. He has published more than 250 papers in a variety of professional publications. Earlier in his career, he published on topics in the field of industrial organization.

More recently, his work involves alcohol, traffic safety, tobacco and obesity policies, as well as cost-effectiveness analyses. Much of this work involves modeling the effects of public policy on substance abuse rates and related deaths, including for tobacco, obesity and alcohol control policy. Levy has been principal investigator of grants from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the Bloomberg/Gates Foundation, the EU and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Levy currently oversees the design and development of the SimSmoke tobacco control policy simulation model. He has developed models for 12 U.S. states and more than 40 countries. He has also developed models incorporating smokeless tobacco as well as models incorporating e-cigarettes.